robmarkey.com

Frugal WOWs: A social media experiment by KLM

Rob Markey — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:58:16 +0000

In 2010, a team at KLM set out to experiment with delivery of tiny gifts -- more demonstrations of commitment and recognition than anything of significant value -- to customers who had made public their travel plans via a Twitter posting. For seven weeks, employees of the airline scoured Twitter for examples of passengers about to board flights who were signalling their travel plans. In some cases, Foursquare was the vehicle the passengers had used to communicate their plans.

In each case, once the team identified a passenger, they did a little research. What else could they learn through quick review of their Twitter profile, information they had

Heading down a slippery, slippery slope

Rob Markey — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Should you change the definition of promoters, passives and detractors? Or should you stick with the accepted standard?

This question comes up fairly often in our client work. Many Bain clients are international or global companies. It turns out people in various cultures use response scales differently. Some Asian cultures, for example, mostly use the middle of the scale. Some South American cultures use the extremes. Very few Japanese respondents are give a 10, but Brazilians use the top of the scale all the time.

Should the definitions of promoter (9-10), passive (7-8) and detractor (0-6) be adapted to local markets?

Sony did it!

Click on the image to see full sizeIt appears Sony developed custom definitions of promoters, passives and detractors. I ran across this presentation slide from research firm Synovate in 2009. A client (not from Sony) recently sent it to me again when he wanted advice responding to local market pressure for changing the definition. (Guess which country manager argued for custom definitions. If you think it was the head of Brazil or Mexico, think again.)

I wonder if Sony stuck with their custom definitions, or

Shooting videos for the new book

Rob Markey — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Fred Reichheld and I spent a full day shooting dialogue and voice-overs for a series of videos we're creating to accompany the new book. It was a really long day, but I enjoyed it. I always love spending time talking with Fred about customer loyalty, loyalty leaders, and how the Net Promoter system helps leaders drive culture change. The big problem wasn't finding enough to say during the eight hours of shooting. Instead, it was getting me and Fred to stop talking so the crew could change batteries or memory cards!

Among the videos we have in the pipeline:

Net Promoter Trailblazers -- four to eight minute videos describing the culture of loyalty-leading companies and how the Net Promoter system has helped them achieve their goals. These are really highly produced and very cool
Book highlights -- Fred and I talking about what's new in The Ultimate Question 2.0
Inspiring company stories -- Fred and I discussing some of the more inspiring companies we've worked with or run across and why we admire them

The crew who set up and shot the videos was super professional and made the day a real pleasure. Quite a "star" experience all around!

We'll be pulling these and others together over the next few months.

Here are some photos from the day.

Fred Reichheld recording voiceover for one of the TrailblazersFred and Rob discussing the new bookRob Markey recording narrative for a Net Promoter Trailblazers video

Our book site is now up! Check it out

Rob Markey — Mon, 30 May 2011 18:30:00 +0000

Fred Reichheld and I have been working hard to get The Ultimate Question 2.0: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World ready for publication. It will be in the stores in September.

In the meantime, you can find a rudimentary version of the book's web site at netpromotersystem.com. As of today, you can find several resources there:

Net Promoter Trailblazers videosRecent blog posts by me and Fred
A downloadable PDF of the first chapter, which explains what's in the new book
Video trailers for our new Net Promoter Trailblazer videos (4-8 minute videos about real loyalty leaders)
The ability to pre-order copies of the book, including customization options

Let us know what you think. Do you like the site? Watch here (and there) for more info about what's coming.

We'll be updating the netpromotersystem.com site little by little over the next few months with more about the book, why we wrote it, the Net Promoter system and what's going on in the Net Promoter community.

Introducing The Promoter Flywheel

Rob Markey — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:23:00 +0000

About 18 months ago, I had an experience with Hertz that illustrated some of the challenges companies confront trying to move beyond simply calculating a Net Promoter score to pursuing the Net Promoter system. If you're interested, you can read about it here (An unfortunate experience with a rental car return).

My experience provides a great illustration of how a company's policies and procedures around bad profits can impact employee engagement and loyalty, and the pernicious doom loop that results. In this case, a system had been set up to ensure the revenue associated with bad profits was collected. No care was taken to avoid insulting customers or calling them liars. Far too many companies engage in similar behavior, not only angering customers, but demoralizing employees.

At Bain, we've been doing more and more client work around the link between employee and customer loyalty as part of the Net Promoter system. Several clients now measure employee NPS (sometimes called "eNPS"). Most have learned the value of devoting just as much effort to earning employee advocacy as customer advocacy, and the virtuous cycle that can create.

Promoter Flywheel is a service mark of Bain & Company, Inc.We call this virtuous cycle "The Promoter Flywheel." We chose the word flywheel with some care. In engineering terms,

jetBlue makes fun of bad profits

Rob Markey — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:22:17 +0000

jetBlue has come out with a great ad campaign that pokes fun at the Detractor-creating fees and policies that create bad profits for other airlines. Really provocative illustration of the concept of bad profits.

To see some of the others in this amusing series, check out their playlist on YouTube.

Five conditions to meet before tying incentives to customer feedback

Rob Markey — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 03:14:42 +0000

In 2006, GE began building incentives around improved Net Promoter Scores in its businesses. Many other companies followed suit. Yet, few have gotten it right. In fact, we have heard many reports of gaming, exclusive focus on the scores and other problems. Several months ago, in my previous post on this topic, I described the challenges companies face when they tie incentives to customer feedback. This post will tackle "pre-conditions" to meet before you move forward. A future post will address some other best practices.

TIAA-CREF includes NPS in executive compensationInterest in tying incentives to NPS and other customer metrics continues. Since at least 2008, TIAA, the big insurance company, has included NPS improvement goals in senior executive compensation. In May 2010 Phones4U, a UK mobile phone retailer, announced a big increase in the weight of NPS in its frontline compensation (news article). The move received mixed reviews from sales staff. Pep Boys, a US auto parts store chain, reports that NPS is an important part of their executive compensation system, and describes it in their proxy statement.

The obvious question: How do you avoid the most serious pitfalls and risks?

Based on our experience, we believe five conditions need to be met before you link incentives to customer feedback:

Reliable metrics
Link to financial and strategic outcomes
Processes and tools for understanding root causes

How and why the Net Promoter approach motivates front line employees

Rob Markey — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:04:55 +0000

Most executives who hear about the Net Promoter system conclude that the reason it works is because it creates a clear outcome metric to which we can hold front line employees, supervisors, managers and executives accountable. In fact, some of the NPS early adopters, most notably GE, focused most of their early efforts on creating a score, setting goals, and linking compensation and incentives to achieving goals for improving that score.

Daniel Pink, the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Amazon listing), references academic research that calls into question the model of behavior at work that relies on a simple "carrot and stick" approach to motivation. First, he shows that the typical reward-and-punish approach often fails to produce the required results, and often produces lower levels of achievement than no incentives at all. Then he shows that a very different approach works much better. This approach is highly consistent with the fundamental principles of the Net Promoter system, and may explain some of why it works so well in so many companies.

Pink reports on a simple and compelling model for motivating achievement in complex tasks (such as, say, figuring out how to really wow a customer in a service interaction). It is built on three elements:

Autonomy: People want to have control over their work.

Hilton is still begging for scores!

Rob Markey — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:29:42 +0000

Email begging for a 10 on Hilton's feedback surveyI swear that I truly don't have anything against Hilton as a company. Truly, I stay in many Hilton properties and I am deeply invested in their rewards program.

But Hilton continues to provide an ongoing stream of worst practice examples regarding customer feedback. I can't think of any company outside of automobile sales and service where I have run across more examples of bold, unabashed begging for scores.

Here's the latest, an email sent to a friend of the NPS Loyalty Forum who had stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn.

In case you missed some of the previous examples I had collected from various Hilton properties, here's a quick access list:

Simple NPS visualization tool creates a wall of emoticons

Rob Markey — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:01:08 +0000

Adam Dorrell is quite creative. He took the emoticons we developed at Bain for our clients and members of the NPS Loyalty Forum, and created a very simple web-based tool for generating simple JPG files for use in presentations.

NPS emoticon tool at Recommendi.comTo create a custom graphical representation of the "wall of faces" using our emoticons, all you need to do is enter your raw data (number of Promoters, Passives and Detractors). The tool generates a picture that you can save to your desktop or copy and paste right into your presentation. We ask only that you respect our trademarks and service marks for NPS, Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and the emoticons.

You can find the Recommendi emoticon tool here: NPS emoticon tool.

If you would like to download images of the Bain NPS emoticons, create an account here, log in, and go to the Member-only Downloads page.

Bain is also developing a simple PowerPoint add-in that will create native PowerPoint graphics using the emoticons. It should be available in a few weeks for registered site visitors.

FYI, Adam also offers a freemium-model-based NPS support system called Recommendi. I have no direct experience with it, but it looks interesting, especially for smaller companies.